What the U.S.’ Withdrawal from the WHO Means for Public Health – TIME

Jan 22, 2026 11:08 AM PT

The U.S. Has Pulled Out of the WHO. Here’s What That Means for Public Health

• Health
• Public Health

by Alice Park, Senior Correspondent

The U.S. was one of the first countries to join the World Health Organization (WHO) when it was created in 1948 as part of the United Nations. But on Jan. 22, 2026, it officially withdrew from the global health group.

The U.S. has historically been the largest funder to the WHO, through both its assessed and voluntary contributions, so the departure is poised to disrupt both global and domestic health. “This is one of the most penny-wise and billion-dollar-foolish moves,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Here’s what to know.

Is the U.S. officially out of the WHO?

The WHO’s charter does not contain a clause allowing member states to withdraw. But in agreeing to join decades ago, the U.S. Congress included an option to leave the organization as long as the U.S. gave a year’s notice and met its financial obligations by paying its dues in full.

The first condition appears to have been met: A year ago, President Donald Trump gave notice that the U.S. would withdraw. But the U.S. has not paid its outstanding dues—including from the final year of the Biden Administration.

The WHO’s principal legal officer Steven Solomon said during a press briefing on Jan. 13 that the matter will be discussed by the organization’s executive board, which is scheduled to meet in February, and those talks could extend to the General Assembly that meets in May. “We look forward to member states discussing this,” he said. “Because these questions of withdrawal—questions of the conditions, the promise, and agreement reached between the U.S. and World Health Assembly [of the WHO]—these are issues reserved for member states, and not issues WHO staff can decide.”

Will the U.S. be prevented from working with the WHO?

Dr. Tedros Ghebreysus, WHO Director-General, has said he is open to accepting the U.S. back as a member and hopes it will reconsider the decision to withdraw.

“WHO has signaled—very intentionally, I think—that they want to continue to work with the U.S.,” says Dr. Judd Walson, chair of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The flag of the United States continues to fly outside the WHO building [in Geneva], and that’s not a mistake. It’s a very intentional signal that they welcome us to re-engage.”

Read More: Bill Gates: I’m Still Optimistic About Global Health

Osterholm says researchers will likely continue to stay in touch with their global-health colleagues, but on an individual level that lacks the coordination and clout of federal-level participation. The yearly update of the flu vaccine is a good example. “The flu world has always been very close globally,” he says. “I am quite convinced that there will be unofficial information-sharing among this group. The question is, at what point does that information have to be official in order for companies to take action deciding which vaccine strains they are going to use?”

Walson sits on a few WHO committees and says he asked his colleagues there whether the U.S. decision changed his ability to participate. “They said absolutely not—that as a U.S. citizen, I still have the capacity to participate in the workings of the WHO. And there are scientists and technical experts engaging to continue to maintain our access [to the WHO] at the individual level. Clearly we have lost the coordination of all of these activities, but we will still have some engagement.”

Solomon echoed that intention. “While there is an open question when and how withdrawal happens, there is not an open question about what the constitution says about WHO’s overall mission. The constitution sets out the objective for the organization, of health for all people, wherever they live and without discrimination.”

What will change now that the U.S. is no longer a member of the WHO?

One of the first things that could change for U.S. scientists is their access to databases that are important for monitoring infectious diseases like influenza, as well as emerging threats that could affect the health of Americans, such as COVID. While many of these data sources are public, and U.S. scientists will continue to access them, they might not have as much insight into how the raw data were collected and processed, says Walson. That could be important for understanding how to interpret the information and for getting a head start on potentially dangerous outbreaks of new infectious diseases. 

Continue/Read Original Article Here: What the U.S.’ Withdrawal from the WHO Means for Public Health | TIME

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'#SuperFlu' wave hits hospitals in #England with no peak yet

Nick Triggle, December 11, 2025

Read more:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8r30787e76o

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/BbX70

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COVID-19 – Global Situation

Editor’s Note: You can keep up with World Health, but do not rely on Trump Administration to keep you aware. They are America First, remember: He does not care about the World Health, period….

Since mid-February 2025, according to data available from sentinel sites, global SARS-CoV-2 activity has been increasing, with the test positivity rate reaching 11%, levels that have not been observed since July 2024.

This rise is primarily observed in countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, and Western Pacific regions. Since early 2025, global SARS-CoV-2 variant trends have slightly shifted. Circulation of LP.8.1 has been declining, and reporting of NB.1.8.1, a Variant Under Monitoring (VUM), is increasing, reaching 10.7% of global sequences reported as of mid-May.

Recent increases in SARS-CoV-2 activity are broadly consistent with levels observed during the same period last year, however, there still lacks a clear seasonality in SARS-CoV-2 circulation, and surveillance is limited. Continued monitoring is essential. WHO advises all Member States to continue applying a risk-based, integrated approach to managing COVID-19 as outlined in the Director-General’s Standing Recommendations [1].

As part of comprehensive COVID-19 control programmes, vaccination remains a key intervention for preventing severe disease and death from COVID-19, particularly among at risk groups.

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It's like 'dead birds flying': How #BirdFlu is spreading in the wild

By Gabrielle Emanuel, Goats And Soda
February 7, 20257:12 AM ET

"A little over a year ago, Marcela Uhart was walking on the beach in Punta Delgada, Argentina. It was peak breeding session on this peninsula known for its rich marine wildlife. Usually, the salty breeze brought with it the sounds of baby elephant seals calling to their moms in high pitched yells.

"'This time it was silent,' recalls Uhart. 'The beaches were just loaded with carcasses. We saw basically every [#ElephantSeal] pup dead. We estimate about 18,000 dead baby elephant seals.'

"Dead from bird flu.

"And it wasn't just elephant seals. There were #terns – with their yellow beaks and black heads – stumbling about having seizures on the sand. The scene played out again and again in the weeks that followed, up and down the coastline. 'It was like birds falling out of the sky, dead,' she says.

"Uhart is a veterinarian and director of the Latin America Program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at University of California, Davis. She arrived at the #PuntaDelgada beach suited up in a white hazmat suit, gloves and goggles in October 2023 ready to take samples and document the decimation. She's been tracking bird flu as it goes from one bird species to another — from seabirds to waterfowl to birds of prey — and then to marine mammals from sea lions to dolphins and then, sometimes, jumping back to birds.

"'It's just like wildfire. I mean it just killed everything it encountered,' she says, speaking to #NPR from #Argentina.

"In the U.S., bird flu headlines have focused on an unprecedented number of American cases and the impact of the virus on dairy cows and on poultry farms. But wildlife researchers like Uhart say the dramatic scene in Argentina is evidence that something new — and ominous — is going on with the virus that causes bird flu. And that ignoring it puts human health in peril.

A 'relay race' that started in 2020 and 2021

"'I've been studying flu viruses closely since 1980 and there are days when I wake up feeling like I know less about flu now than I did 10 years ago,' says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. That's especially true, he says, of bird flu.

"The particular virus that causes bird flu — H5N1 — itself is not new. It's a disease that originated in east Asia, first detected in China in 1996. The virus has mostly terrorized poultry farms and led to massive culling. It has occasionally spilled over to humans, causing some 400 deaths over the decades, but rarely spreads human-to-human. And while it has jumped over into wild birds periodically — killing many birds in many places — it never took off globally.

"Then came 2020 and 2021, when the version that's driving the current outbreak emerged.

"The virus evolved so some wild birds are able to migrate just far enough to reach another bird community or mammal population to pass the virus on before dying.

"'What you see here is like a relay race,' Uhart says. 'We were all skeptical that this could be possible, but then somehow this started happening.'

"'We've gone from this concept of dead birds don't fly to this new virus that seems to be a bit more like dead bird flying,' explains Erik Karlsson, head of the Virology Unit at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge in Cambodia and the director of the National Influenza Center of Cambodia.

"This means that the virus doesn't just stick around on poultry farms and periodically jump over into wildlife, but can sustain itself in wild birds, moving from one flock to the next without burning itself out.

"Scientists are still trying to understand exactly how the virus spreads between animals. One theory is that scavenger birds feast on mammal carcasses 'that are loaded with virus, then they get infected, obviously, and can spread it easily on their feet or beaks,' says Uhart. Another theory, she says: "It could be that [animals] poop in the water and the other animals drink [that water].' [That's what I think...]

"One theory of transmission is that birds come into contact with animals, like these elephant seal pups, who have died of bird flu — and pick up the virus.

How far can dead birds fly?

"Wild birds are particularly well suited to take this virus global — and fast.

"'If the natural reservoir for this virus was any other animal species than birds, we might expect to see it only located on a certain continent because animals don't swim across oceans. They don't climb over mountain ranges. The one animal species that does is birds,' says Osterholm.

"Traveling in infected wild birds, the virus took off and jumped over to North America in late 2021. From there, it went to #SouthAmerica leaving, destruction in its wake.

"'In South America, it traveled the 6,000 kilometer spine in about six months,' says Michelle Wille, senior research fellow at the Center for Pathogen Genomics at the University of Melbourne. 'So this is a virus that's not assisted by airplanes. This is a virus that's traveling by mass mortality after mass mortality after mass mortality after mass mortality.' It is killing not just birds in large numbers but also mammals, like elephant seals and #SeaLions, as well as #porpoises, #dolphins and #otters to a lesser degree.

"This year, South America has been a lot quieter. 'Surprisingly, Brazil does not have these recent cases in wild birds,' says Helena Lage Ferreira, a veterinary biologist at the University of São Paulo who studies #AvianFlu. Her team has tried to determine whether the birds have acquired #immunity. So far, results have been unclear. 'It's very difficult to understand," she says.

"Meanwhile, there's a new part of the planet at risk. Researchers are realizing the virus is now plaguing #Antarctica.

"They worry about this trend because Antarctica is a particularly hard place to study — and many of the animals that live there don't live elsewhere in the world. Even if there are researchers on the ground to collect samples, 'you have to wait for months and months on months, until those samples actually get to a lab, potentially also in the opposite hemisphere of the world,' says Uhart. And, by that time, she speculates, the virus will have already spread much further.

"This adds to a broader problem: Globally, nobody knows how many wild animals the virus has killed.

"'No one's counting. We have no idea,' says Wille. 'It is a global catastrophe'
Wildlife with the virus are bad news for humans

"Researchers say the rapid spread is catastrophic for the animal species that are being hard hit. For example, in #Peru, thousands of Peruvian #pelicans have died. 'In a few weeks, almost one in two individuals of a species that just completely disappeared,' says Wille. And, she adds, it's still too early to know how these mass die-offs will impact ecosystems but it's likely to be significant.

"On top of that, this matters for human health.

"Wille and a team of other wildlife experts estimate that millions of birds have been infected and died, and tens of thousands of marine mammals have died. Each animal that is infected — particularly mammals — is another chance for the virus to evolve and become better suited to infecting people.

"This rapid evolution was evident earlier this year, when the first U.S. person — from Louisiana — died of bird flu. When scientists sequenced the virus from different organs from the body, they found 'the virus was changing within,' says Uhart. While this patient didn't pass the virus on to other people, Uhart says this case indicates how quickly the virus can change.

"There's another element in this genetic game. The virus is able to mix and match its genes with local influenza viruses if one animal is infected with multiple flu viruses. As this highly deadly bird flu virus arrives in new places it can mingle with a big pool of less deadly flu viruses and create new 'Frankenstein' viruses, explains Wille.

"And with each genetic change, there is the chance the virus could become more severe.

"At the moment, the virus can infect humans but has not yet evolved to jump readily from one human to another. That could change.

"And without keeping up with the virus's journey in wild animals, experts worry, humans will be caught unprepared and ill-equipped to tackle bird flu.

"'Ever since #H5N1 [bird flu] showed up,' says Osterholm, 'I tend to sleep with one eye open.'"

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/07/g-s1-46402/bird-flu-wild-animals-mammals-virus?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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PEPFAR’s computer systems also are being taken offline, a sign that the program may not return, as Republican critics had hoped.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/health/pepfar-trump-freeze.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU4.nnB5.iT69u4FuwlEZ&smid=url-share

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